The first ice cellar
With his neck bent and head lowered, he crawled in the cold and damp rat hole, and could only use his hands and elbows to grab the uneven ice surface and drag his body forward.
The temperature inside the mouse hole was even lower than outside. My fingers would immediately become stuck if they touched the cold ice surface. When I raised my hand, a large piece of bloody skin was torn off.
Jiang Jingyuan cut off a piece of the plush cloak and wrapped it carefully around his hands, then continued to crawl forward.
She came to Bai Zhou Mountain in a hurry, and even the plush cloak was casually put into the silver storage ring at some point in the past.
She didn't know how long she had been crawling in the dark and cramped rat hole. She couldn't look back, and even her vision was restricted to a small piece of ice in front of her - perhaps she hadn't actually walked very far, but she could only keep moving forward.
The cold air seemed to have turned into countless tiny pointed hammers, hitting every inch of her bones one by one. The pain was not as severe as that of a real knife or gun, but it was extremely painful.
Surprisingly, Jiang Jingyuan followed the ghosts into the cave, but she hadn't seen a single ghost in her long journey. If she hadn't been able to sense the tracking powder spreading a clear path ahead, she would have doubted the authenticity of her previous memories...
The feeling of crawling forward was not pleasant, especially in this darkness that exuded an ominous aura. She felt dazed and always felt that she was actually a mouse, crawling in the cold and biting mouse hole for a long time. The scenery outside the mouse hole seemed to be just some ancient legends and myths passed down by the old man.
The soreness in her neck, the confinement of her stretched bones, and other discomforts reminded her that this was not the place where she lived, but that she came from a distant, mythical outside world.
The large and small rat holes on the ice wall seen from the outside formed a winding dark maze in the thick ice layer. The front, back, left, right, and even up and down were densely packed with crudely made rat holes of various sizes.
The traces of the tracing powder were found in almost every direction of the passage, and they were so complicated that Jiang Jingyuan had no way of judging which one might be the passage for the ghosts to leave the ice cellar.
Jiang Jingyuan thought about it, clasped his hands wrapped in plush cloth at a passage entrance on the lower right, and squeezed in by curling up as much as possible.
This passage seemed to be the one with the largest space among all the passages here. Even so, she still had to curl up and get in. If she chose another passage, she would probably get stuck halfway.
The downward passage always gave people a feeling of losing control of their bodies. Jiang Jingyuan's hands emerged from the cloth strips, tightly grasping the uneven and slightly prickly ice layer below. She couldn't help but feel a fear in her heart...
My heart feels like it's being slowly trapped by a net, tightening... tightening... tightening...
Her breathing unconsciously stopped.
She felt as if she were crawling in a narrow, damp passage leading to hell, her body being grabbed by the dense, bony hands of countless evil spirits, dragging her down to hell...
When Jiang Jingyuan came back to her senses, she realized that she had no idea when and how she had arrived at the entrance of the rat hole, and she had been curled up at the entrance in a daze for a long time.
Jiang Jingyuan immediately crawled out of the cramped rat hole, and when his two feet stood firmly on the icy ground, all the bones in his body finally stretched.
She did not indulge in the feeling of transforming from a mouse into a human. She immediately stood in the corner and looked around vigilantly.
This is a square ice cellar that you can see the end of at a glance. It is really pitifully small compared to the ice cellar at the other end of the passage, but it surprisingly looks very familiar to Jiang Jingyuan.
There was no trace of a ghost in the ice cellar, only invisible tracking powder scattered all over the ground - maybe it was because there hadn't been such a long darkness for a long time, the powder on the ghost's body was almost all over the ice cellar, even on the four ice walls.
Jiang Jingyuan, who was used to hiding in the corner, looked at the ice cellar in front of him, and his eyes gradually became solemn.
She recognized it.
This was the ice cellar she had been in when she arrived here, the first ice cellar.
She actually came back here again... Jiang Jingyuan turned around and looked at the rat hole she had come from. Now she looked carefully, there was no rat hole on that ice wall -
This is not a rat hole, it is clearly a space crack!
Jiang Jingyuan's heart sank. Had she taken the wrong path? Was the method she had found ineffective?
Lin Li's story echoed in her mind for a long time, and she seemed to be more prone to self-doubt. Lost, anxious, and a faint pain and despair lingered in her heart.
Calm down, calm down...
Jiang Jingyuan breathed gently and steadily, trying to calm himself down.
"It's okay. I still have the Soaring Snake mark, and I haven't tried the double-happiness teleportation yet... Calm down first. It's not hopeless yet. Don't worry, don't be afraid..."
Jiang Jingyuan carefully discerned the distribution and whereabouts of the traceability powder, focusing all his attention on analysis:
"That's right, actually."
"There are no living people in this ice cellar, and no creatures other than ghosts have appeared. Yet, ghosts still choose to flock here when darkness falls—not just one or two, but probably twenty or thirty."
"This ice cellar must have something special about it."
She continued thinking, "Besides, whether it was Lin Li and his men or me, we first arrived at this ice cellar, so it's very likely that the passage connecting to the outside world is inside this ice cellar."
"Where is it..." Jiang Jingyuan thought, looking up and looking around the entire ice cellar in the darkness.
"I walked into the second ice cellar from a spatial crack, but when I came out from the spatial crack connected to the rat hole in the last ice cellar, I arrived at the first ice cellar... Could it be that each spatial crack here connects to a different location?!"
If that's the case, then it would be a bit troublesome... Jiang Jingyuan didn't know when the "rat" would come to find him, and it was probably too late for him to try each space crack one by one.
If the "mouse" discovered her attempt, no matter whether her attempt was correct or not, the "mouse" would not give her another chance to try again.
The "rat" is very smart. The "rat" knows that any reaction it makes to Jiang Jingyuan's attempts will reveal information. The best way for the "rat" is to stop letting her go and instead watch her and trap her.
Any roundabout cover-up and misleading is not as good as solving the problem directly from the source!
Jiang Jingyuan felt herself unconsciously getting anxious again, but she gritted her teeth and endured it. She couldn't be anxious at this time. The more anxious she was, the more likely she would miss clues.
Suddenly, she was stunned.
Her gaze drifted towards the dense, chaotic, and indistinguishable mass of invisible powder on the ground. She seemed to unravel a complete network of veins within it. She watched the countless paths ascending the four ice walls, her gaze following them slowly upwards...
Jiang Jingyuan raised his head and his gaze fell on the high roof made of thick ice above his head, and on the area where countless paths converged.
Jiang Jingyuan's heart was pounding.
Countless warm currents caused by excitement flowed from her heart to her limbs, briefly dispelling the immense coldness that had implanted in her bone marrow.
Jiang Jingyuan did not stay any longer and climbed up from the corner of the ice wall. She was as light and nimble as a white ghost in the dark night. Her dress was light and fluttering, and she seemed to be floating upwards like a ghost, facing the sky and her back to the ground, clinging to the ice ceiling.
If anyone else saw this terrifying scene, they would definitely think it was some new ghost... But, there was no one else here.
Jiang Jingyuan blinked her eyes. Perhaps because the hope of leaving was right in front of her, she felt relieved and happy.
However, when she approached the space with the spatial crack and wanted to enter, she was surprised to find that her hand passed through the space that should have been the spatial crack completely without any hindrance, and touched the ice wall behind the spatial crack. The chill was clearly transmitted from her fingers to Jiang Jingyuan's heart...
How could this happen?!
This was at the top. Jiang Jingyuan had no way of controlling the spirit rope to detect whether there were any spatial cracks in this area, and she didn't have the eyes of a ghost that could see through space...
However, isn't this obvious convergence of ghost paths a space crack?
Where did the ghost go?
It's impossible that they all disappeared inexplicably in this area, right?!
This was so bizarre, so terrifying… Jiang Jingyuan felt a bone-chilling chill envelop her entire body, and the aching pain in her bones surged up again like a tide, eroding her consciousness bit by bit…
The final result directly overturned all her previous guesses and ideas.
Her mind was in a mess.
"No, no, it's not necessarily the wrong location, it could be that some condition isn't met..." Jiang Jingyuan's only clear ray of reason in the chaos of his mind was still insisting on analyzing, "What is it? Ghosts can pass through spatial rifts, but humans can't... Is this the difference between humans and ghosts?"
"Isn't the difference between humans and ghosts just humans and ghosts?!!"
Jiang Jingyuan's head ached, his thoughts racing: "But I can come in? Are the conditions for coming in more relaxed? It seems...it seems like something is not right..."
"mouse……"
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the darkness below, mixed with a thin but hoarse voice like the sound of wood rubbing against each other.
Jiang Jingyuan turned around suddenly and looked in the direction of the voice.
The face of an old man with two dark green lanterns embedded in it appeared in the dark corner at some point. The dark green light dimly illuminated his face full of wriggling wrinkles, casting a terrifying and eerie dark green on his face.
Its mouth stretched to its limit every time it opened and closed, revealing its scarlet mouth and tongue, and it screamed angrily, word by word:
"You actually ran here, damn rat! Damn rat!!!"
The sound was sharp and resounded throughout the ice cellar, causing Jiang Jingyuan's mind to ache and his face to look painful.
Almost at the same time, she suddenly understood.
Her guess was right, she didn't look in the wrong place!
"That's right, that's right. Keep thinking, what condition hasn't been met..." Jiang Jingyuan's thoughts raced as he watched the angry old woman stretch out her cracked hands to grab the ice wall and quickly climb up. "Why did I come in? Why did I come in... Obviously..."
Jiang Jingyuan's heart skipped a beat:
"Clearly...Hua Simiao didn't even come here!!!"
They walked down the stone path one after another, with Hua Simiao even walking ahead of her. Why didn't Hua Simiao come here, but she entered this ice cellar instead?!
Is there any difference between her and Hua Simiao?
Did she and Hua Simiao experience anything different?
Different things...
Jiang Jingyuan watched the old woman's ferocious face approach, about to pounce on him. His pupils shrank, and without thinking too much, he quickly took out the gorgeous lantern from the silver storage ring.
“Snap!”
A faint blue flame burst out from the lantern's wick mechanism, illuminating the surroundings with a pale blue light that was almost white...
As the old woman with a distorted face pounced on him, Jiang Jingyuan entered the space crack with a lantern in his hand.
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